Hockey fans in Seattle cannot wait for NHL: 'It's busting at the seams'

SEATTLE — It’s a Tuesday evening at The Angry Beaver and the place is packed with sports fans.

Well, hockey fans to be exact.

There are half a dozen TVs hanging in the downtown Seattle sports bar, and each one is tuned to a different NHL game. Variety is very much a necessity. On this night, there is fan wearing a Connor Hellebuyck jersey and another in a now-dated Niklas Hjalmarsson jersey, while the guy at the bar has a logo of the San Jose Sharks tattooed on his hand.

All fans are welcome, just as long as they’re hockey fans. But that’s about to change.

When Tim Pipes opened the NHL-themed bar six years ago, the Toronto native wasn’t thinking that customers would one day come in and cheer for an NHL franchise out of Seattle. He just wanted to provide fans with an alternative to watching football.

“It wasn’t even on the radar,” said Pipes.

Now, with the NHL coming to Seattle as early as two years from now, he’s got some redecorating to do. The only piece of memorabilia currently hanging on the wall bearing the Seattle name is an old framed Metropolitans jersey. Rumour has it that some 20-year-old kid from Seattle purchased the naming rights to the logo years back in hopes of cashing in if the NHL ever relocated to Seattle.

But before we start talking about potential team names and colours, expansion drafts or who the coach and general manager will be, the old Key Arena has to be gutted and reconstructed in time for the 2020-21 season. And before any of that happens, the league has to ratify Seattle as the 32nd franchise at the Board of Governors meeting in Georgia on Tuesday.

Of course, it’s considered more of a rubber stamp than referendum-type vote. The league’s executive committee already voted 9-0 in favour of approval back in October. Spend a few days in the city and you will quickly see why.

This is a hockey market waiting to happen.

It might not be a sure thing like Quebec might have been had the league been willing to forgo geographical balance and added another team to the Eastern Conference. But Seattle is hardly a gamble the way that Las Vegas was considered to be a couple of years ago.

After all, it took only 12 minutes to sell 10,000 deposits during a season ticket drive back in March. Vegas needed an entire month to reach the same goal.

“I used to tell people what a great market this would be,” said John Barr, who founded the website NHLtoSeattle.com in 2008, “because I had come from the Bay Area before the Sharks were there. And this is 10 times the market. It’s busting at the seams.”

The night before, Barr had been playing shinny at a 3-on-3 rink in the Seattle suburb of Renton. There were about a dozen players on the ice. Only one of them was born and raised in Seattle. The rest hailed from Whitby, Ont., Texas, North Dakota, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and the Czech Republic — a by-product of having a large tech sector that has attracted out-of-towners.

“You’d have a hard time finding someone who didn’t at one time work for Google, Amazon or Microsoft,” said minor hockey coach Clayton Rogers, who moved to Seattle from Surrey, B.C. in 2001. “Until basketball comes back, there’s a shortage of winter sports. And there’s a lot of Canadians down here too. There’s a lot more interest down here than people probably expect.”

Beyond the $650-million expansion fee, Seattle is a chance for the NHL to add balance to the league by having a 16th team in the Western Conference. It’s also a chance to expand to a growing area — it’s the fastest growing city in the past decade according to the U.S. Census Bureau — that ever since the SuperSonics relocated in 2008 is in need of a winter sport.

“Seattle is an incredible market,” said Brian Robinson, a real-estate investor who is on the mayor’s commission on civic arenas. “Our economy is booming. We’ve got Fortune 500 companies and an audience that has money to spend.”

Still, in the days leading up to the ticket drive, no one was really sure if people would spend that hard-earned money on hockey tickets.

“I was losing sleep the night before, because I don’t know 10,000 people and that was the target,” said Barr. “I literally took out Facebook advertising money to raise awareness. What if nobody shows up?”

Dave Tippett, who was hired by Tim Leiweke, the CEO of Seattle’s Oak View Group, as a senior hockey adviser, was just as concerned.

“The night before I had texted Tim and said, ‘Good luck.’ He texted back, ‘I have a good feeling about this.’ We sold 33,000 season tickets in two days, and there’s probably another eight or ten thousand on the waiting list,” said Tippett. “It’s crazy. Everyone knows their number. Some guy came up to me and said I’m 7,204.”

Seattle is about a two-hour drive from Vancouver. But apart from the fact that each is home to franchises in the Western Hockey League (Thunderbirds and Giants), the only thing the two cities really have in common is the rain.

“This is the last place in the United States that’s turned on to hockey,” said Seattle Thunderbirds GM Russ Farwell. “When I came here back 22 years ago, there were three rinks. There’s only six rinks now.”

None of those rinks are located in downtown Seattle. The closest is about 40 km away in the suburb of Renton. Driving out to Sno-King Arena, which takes you across Lake Washington and what is the world’s second-largest floating bridge, you cannot help but notice the blue banners hanging from houses and the sides buildings all bearing the No. 12. It’s a reference to the “12th Man” jersey that the Seahawks retired in 1984 in honour of their fans.

In other words, this is football country. And it’s followed not-so-closely by baseball, basketball and the various NCAA teams. Hockey is considered a niche sport, slightly ahead of soccer.

“It’s expensive,” said Doug Kirton, an Elmvale, Ont., native who runs the hockey programs at Sno-King. “The base fees are around $1,000 to start. A travel peewee team would be $2,200. And that doesn’t include the travel.”

“Hockey is not our No. 1 sport here and it probably won’t be,” said Creston, B.C. native Jamie Huscroft, a former NHL defenceman who runs the Sno-King Arena. “When I came here 15 years ago, we were almost bankrupt. It’s a pipe dream to think you’re going to knock off football or baseball. If you see a playoff run like Vegas had, you’ll see some momentum. But you’ll still be nipping at the heels of the Seahawks and Mariners. You can’t compete.”

What Seattle can do is steal away some of the pie. And with Amazon, Microsoft, and several other tech companies in the area, there are plenty of people with disposable incomes looking to pay for a bite.

“The wealth in this city, the business opportunities of people who want to be a part of it has been incredible,” said Tippett. “Just getting to know the people here, there’s a lot of money.”

Tippett is sitting in a Starbucks a block away from where Key Arena is currently under construction. He’s also down the street from an area that has already undergone a dramatic change since the SuperSonics played here.

Amazon opened its new headquarters last January with a massive campus that features 33 buildings and takes an hour and a half to cover by foot. “Make sure to wear comfortable shoes,” advises a tour guide. More than 40,000 people are employed by the Fortune 500 company, which boasts that total compensation for its employees is $25.7-billion.

And with 15% of the workforce reportedly living in the same ZIP code as the office, it’s becoming clear who will be attending NHL games in the future. It’s not necessarily going to be the junior hockey fan who is used to paying junior hockey prices.

That is, not unless he has a friend who works for Amazon.

“I probably know more people outside of Seattle than who are actually from here,” said Barr. “It’s growing like crazy. Try to notice all the cranes. It’s making it unaffordable for a lot of people. There’s just a huge Amazon influence. Half my beer league team — that’s what they do.

“The old mayor always used to describe Seattle as San Jose on steroids.”

TIPPETT HAS ‘BUILDER’S MENTALITY’

SEATTLE — Dave Tippett spent 14 seasons coaching in the National Hockey League. But the 57-year-old, who was replaced as head coach of the Arizona Coyotes after the 2016-17 season, has no inclination of stepping behind the bench when Seattle is granted an NHL franchise.

Nor does he want to become the team’s general manager.

“No, that’s not for me,” said Tippett, who was hired by the Oak View Group last spring. “You start to file away names of people who might have interest down the road. We have a pretty good list.”

Tippett would not reveal who is on the list, but he was in Arizona when the team tried to hire Kelly McCrimmon, who is now Vegas’ assistant general manager. With Mark Hunter, Ron Hextall and Chuck Fletcher available — and with Detroit’s Ken Holland’s contract expiring after the 2019-20 season — he has a lot of good options.

“The NHL rules allow you to be competitive. Vegas did an unbelievable job with that,” said Tippett. “It’s not like expansion teams in the past, where you felt like you were behind the eight-ball. You might not have superstars right away, but you have a chance to have a real solid team.”

For now, Tippett is happy to look at paint colours (“We’ve got to pick out team colours first,” he said) and helping to build something from the ground up.

“I’ve always kind of had a builder’s mentality to me,” he said. “I’ve built motorcycles and cars in the past, so it’s kind of intriguing. You get to help build the culture of an organization. There’s a lot of intrigue around expansion right now, because of what Vegas did last year.”

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